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After the celebration of NCAA Women’s Championship last week, when the swimmer from Penn, Lia Thomaswon a college degree in the 500m freestyle and swam in two other championship finals, members of the swimming community continue to issue public statements about the controversial presence of a transgender woman in women’s competition.
The latest protests have come from a group of swimmers from the University of Arizonaincluding veteran coach and manager of the US national swim team, Frank Buschand the 2008 Olympian, Lacey Nymeyer.
“Do we have the right to speak? It is difficult to explain the concern that we feel in the women’s swimming community after what happened last week. On the one hand, we feel that we are experiencing irrevocable damage to the sport that has made us grow and become better. another, we have come back together as sisters after many difficult years,” the University of Arizona swimmers wrote in a letter to NCAA leadership.
Lia Thomas, Emma Weyant and Erica Sullivan, on the NCAA podium
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The letter raised important questions about the fairness of Thomas’s involvement. The letter says the body has “failed everyone” by allowing Thomas to compete against cisgender women while trying to “make everyone happy.” “The weight of protests and national humiliation was placed on a trans athlete,” they insist, adding that the other swimmers saw how “the integrity of the championship was eliminated.”
The letter says Thomas “catapulted a team into a top-20 program in the country after failing to score a single point last year.”
Inequality of opportunities?
The letter goes on to contrast Thomas’s situation with that of Iszac Henig, a transgender man who remains eligible for the women’s tournaments and swam alongside Thomas in the 100m freestyle final. It is emphasized that transgender women to men “do not have the same opportunities as those who experience the opposite process”, that they are “severely handicapped when it comes to getting a place on a team due to the differences in strength and speed between the various categories.
“We are open and eager to discuss directly with the NCAA potential steps that can be taken to create new solutions to expand the family of this sport,” the letter concludes.
[Más información: Qué pasaría si Lia Thomas fuera española: la lucha entre la Ley Trans de Montero y las federaciones]
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